JULY 6, 1998:
It might seem ridiculous to compare the career of singer Patty Griffin
to the role of Sandy in the movie Grease. After all, Griffin is an
unusually intriguing and complex performer, while Olivia Newton-John's
screen character was a deliberately one-dimensional concoction.

Nonetheless, Griffin recently initiated a self-transformation as
complete and as startling as Sandy's shift in the movie from introverted
schoolgirl to leather-and-lipstick vixen. The difference is that, in
Griffin's case, evolving from an acoustic singer-songwriter to a fiery
rocker involved more than a costume change. Doubtless, her new persona will
seem downright scandalous to some of her most ardent followers.

"I know I'm going to scare old fans," the singer says with a laugh. "But
I can't really allow myself to worry about it. I've got to do what I've got
to do. What I'm doing is totally me, and I can't apologize for it."

Griffin speaks with a confidence that was absent in interviews only two
years ago, shortly before the release of her first album, the outstanding
Living With Ghosts. That album featured only Griffin accompanying
herself on acoustic guitar; by contrast, the new album, Flaming Red,
kicks off with a blast of punk-fueled guitar ferocious enough to fit in
next to cuts by Alanis Morissette and Rage Against the Machine.

"If I think of where I was at when I was starting, and I look at where I
am now, then I can see that it would be surprising to someone," she says.
"But it's been a long process, so it's not surprising to me."

Indeed, Griffin's evolution is ongoing, and the story behind it is one
of a reserved woman who both literally and figuratively found her voice.
Her poignant tale emphasizes the empowering role music can play in an
individual's life. And in this sense, she's still coming into her own.

Griffin grew up north of Bangor, Maine, near the Canadian border. The
youngest of seven children, she was taught that politeness and quietness
were valued traits; expressiveness and openness were not. "Emotions like
anger were not in my vocabulary," she recalled in an interview two years
ago.

Years later, as she struggled through a failing marriage in Boston, she
began to notice how she continually capitulated to her husband, holding
back her opinions and placing his goals before hers. The problem grew
increasingly debilitating as the relationship fell apart.

Her husband had, however, encouraged her interest in performing.
Divorced and working as a waitress in Boston, Griffin finally followed
through on her ambition, first writing songs that were achingly, nakedly
personal. "Writing definitely helped me to heal," she says.

Too shy to audition for a band, she began showing up at open-mic nights
at area clubs. Despite her initial stage fright, the petite redhead
eventually found her voice--and what a blowtorch of a voice it was. "I'm
not a huge person," she says, "but I can get loud."

Her songs were similarly bold. More often than not, the music on
Living With Ghosts explodes in a cathartic surge of emotional
release. Although the album includes a couple of delicately beautiful
songs, the focus of her debut is on brutally raw material that probes
personal issues with poetic anguish and compelling candidness. But unlike
some of her peers, Griffin didn't write these songs simply to share her
pain or to lash out at those who had hurt her. Rather, she used these
expressions of frank emotion as a way of cleansing herself.

So fans shouldn't be so surprised at the stylistic leap on Flaming
Red. Considering the potency of her past recordings and the
rocket-fueled force of her voice, the rougher sounds and faster tempos seem
like a natural progression.

The transformation came about last year, as Griffin's fan base and radio
airplay were continuing to build. The singer's Nashville-based manager,
Michael Baker, convinced her label, A&M Records, to hire well-regarded
Nashville rocker Jay Joyce to add rock tracks to a couple of her songs,
"Let It Fly" and "Every Little Bit."

Joyce didn't go into the studio with Griffin; he just added a band to
what already was on tape. But the singer liked the results, and when she
was asked to contribute a new song to a film soundtrack, she recruited
Joyce to produce the track--with a band backing her this time.

It worked out well. Since Griffin had moved to Nashville briefly in
1997, she and Joyce "started to hang out and just play for the fun of it.
The more I got to know Jay and his work, the more comfortable I felt with
him."

She knew A&M wanted her to try working with a producer and a band for
her second album. Without informing the record company, she started
recording songs with Joyce at his home studio in Green Hills. "I kind of
sneaked around the company's back," she says. "They were real concerned
about who I was going to work with. If I brought up Jay, they might've said
no. So Jay got some musicians to come in without knowing whether they'd get
paid or not, and we started recording songs. Once we got started, I had
great confidence in it."

As it turned out, when her record company heard the songs, they
expressed a similar confidence. Griffin blossomed like never before in the
studio, feeling free to try a wide variety of musical styles. As a result,
Flaming Red isn't as consistent or as cohesive as Living With
Ghosts, but it's certainly less predictable.

Besides aggressive guitar rock, the album features a sunny, melodic pop
song, a Tom Waits-like lounge tune, and a spare piano ballad that's closer
in tone to Lisa Germano or Marianne Faithfull than to Fiona Apple or Trisha
Yearwood. Surprisingly, one of the best songs on the new album is "Wiggley
Fingers," a playfully raw rocker about masturbation and Catholic guilt.

Still, several of the songs--"Mary," "Christina," "Blue Sky," "Carry
Me"--come too close to the generic modern-pop sound favored by MTV and
so-called alternative-rock radio. Griffin and Joyce do add odd twists that
give the songs more depth than your average Matchbox 20 opus, but the
lyrics and the arrangements occasionally fall into a pattern that lulls
rather than grabs the listener. The formulaic sound probably pleases the
singer's record company, but it's the one aspect of Griffin's album that
disappoints--far more so than the shift from acoustic to electric
instrumentation.

But the singer, who now lives in Austin, is thrilled with the record's
diversity. "I love all kinds of music, and I'm real happy that now, with
this record, I'm not restricted to any one style," she says. "We really
managed to put a lot on there. There are so many colors, and that's what's
shocking to me. I just feel incredibly free now to express myself however I
want."

For a shy woman who, less than a decade ago, could barely find the inner
strength to walk onstage, that's quite an accomplishment.